When Good Games Go Bad

Yeah, I know, the title is a bit on the dramatic side...forgive me, it sounds awesome and I had to use it.

Debbie & I have been playing a ton of Defiance on the 360 lately.  It came out in April 2013 and the price point dropped embarrassingly fast.  It is an MMO which is pretty intriguing and awesome on the console, as my MMO experience before this was only WoW.

Us ladies of Achievos have fairly similar taste in games, but somehow we rarely end up playing the same stuff.  If we do play the same game, I'm usually playing it about a year after Debbie has already completed and re-sold it.  So it has been super fun to have this game that we can run around in together and kill all the evil, diseased masses.  The game is an MMO, so we do see lots of other people in game as well.  But seeing them running around is pretty much as much interaction as you're going to get.

And this is where the good game goes bad.

Defiance has an unbelievable amount of potential.  It is fun.  It is a functional console MMO.  It has a large world map, easy travel, a number of weapons that would rival Borderlands, and multiple skill trees to build out your perfect character.

That said, it is the least multi-player MMO that I have ever heard of.  The grouping option is sloppy at best,

Hey, I see you over there. Wish we could interact.

as we are constantly booted from our group for no apparent reason.  And the group questing is also confusing.  If one character has already completed the mission, they often can't see everything going on, and their partner will freeze and disappear during cutscenes or to fight bosses that are no longer available to you.  There are clans, but we have unsuccessfully joined a couple and there doesn't seem to be much benefit to being in them.  Although that might just be because we haven't found a great, active one yet.

The world map is large, but the quests are extremely repetitive.  I hope you like ranchers, because you're going to be saving the same few groups of them day in and day out.  Yes, it is a reputation daily quest, but there are story lines and side missions that have you doing the same thing over and over too.  And the game is notoriously bad for having you travel 100 meters to pick up a quest, then 200 meters to get the next piece of information, 150 meters to kill 3 guys...etcetc..  It gets old quick.  At least there is fast travel, and the vehicles (while easily stopped on any small barrier) are super fun and quick to drive.

Finally, the weapons.  There are approximately 80 gazillion to choose from.  There are all of your favorite types. Prefer pistols? Snipers? Shotties?  We've got it all.  And on top of that, there are 4 or 5 different variations.  Sawed-off shotguns, pump action, combat...  And you are constantly getting loot.  New and amazing things to shoot.  And mods to make them even better!  But heaven help you if you can manage all of this with the awkward menus, impossible to compare weapon lists, and constant juggling of those mods.  It's fun, but good luck.  I find myself keeping my old trusty weapons and mostly scrapping or selling everything else.

Now you may be wondering why we're playing if it's just got so many hiccups.  Why?  Why are we pouring hours and hours into leveling up our guns and characters and searching Paradise for the random information stash?  Because it is really fun.  Even though the game has its issues, it is still a blast.  And remember when I said the price point was embarrassingly low soon out of the gate? That is a glaring hint to you, readers.  If you haven't picked up this game, go get it.  The more of us who play, the more fun it will be.

Digging Up Dirt on Megan

I'm sure you all remember our fabulous guest blogger Megan from her three part review of Rift (found here: Part 1, Part 2, Part 3).  Well, we dug up some dirt on her and are here to fill you in on what's the haps in her gamer life.

Gamer tag?  Maegaan (So creative, I know!)

Where do you spend the majority of your gaming time?  The majority of time spent gaming is now on PC, a shift from my console based roots. Most time is spent playing Warcrack, but I also enjoy playing Spore from time to time still, and am avidly looking forward to the release of Diablo3. I also enjoy Rift, though trying to keep up two different MMOs to the standards I've set for myself don't allow much time for it anymore.

We have seen that your love is mostly spent on WoW.  What is your favorite character race/type to play?  My hunter was my first character, and I never truly enjoy playing on another character as much as my hunter. I like trolls, but goblins are way fun, as are Worgen (and are now the only alliance race I'll play). 

How do you feel about game guilds?  They are almost impossible to avoid in a game like WoW.  Game guilds can be both a blessing and a curse. I tend to view them much the same way as I do cliques in real life. Having a built in group of people to do things with is fantastic, but if you have no good way of 'breaking in' to one of these groups, it can be rough going. Much rougher on games like Rift or, to a slightly lesser extent WoW, where much of the end game content once you get to max level is solely ran by guild groups. People claim guilds aren't necessary in WoW, and it's true that they aren't 'necessary,' but having a group of people committed to completing things efficiently and well makes the world of difference in how much you enjoy your playtime (see: amount of Megan's swearing when forced to run a dungeon in the Looking For Dungeon matchmaking system, good lord there are a lot of idiots out there!)

And what about achievements?  They are a fairly new addition to the WoW world.  Achievements are a nice bonus for people that care about that kind of thing. I go on streaks where I will try to get more, but it's not something I care to focus on. Most of them are silly and don't mean much besides the point total. I am a closet DPS meter whore though, and that is what I focus my game around. I very much try to not gloat in game or anything, but I seeing my name at the top of the DPS meter, and I will pout and complain incessantly until I am able to achieve that. I don't let my love of meter topping keep me from avoiding standing in fire though!

She hunts. She heals. She focuses on DPS.. And when she's bored she creates beautiful fireworks shows.
If you're on WoW, look for this girl (server Ner'zhul).

 

Rift in Review, Part 3

The final wrap up of Megan's extensive review of Rift. This is the clincher - the part where she...well, I won't ruin any surprises. We certainly enjoyed having her as a guest blogger! If anyone out there wants to post, please email us at achievos @ gmail.com and let us know!

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I’ll go straight for the throat now – why, despite enjoying this game, did I go back to WoW? There is no singular, big, unifying answer; more of a lot of small things that gave me the desire to head back to Azeroth. Keep in mind that most of these centers around end game complaints, which will never be an issue for many MMO players. One issue I had was each server, or shard, is not assigned a time zone. This initially didn’t strike me as too much of a deal breaker until I had reached max level and wanted to proceed into more end game oriented activities (the more difficult 5 man dungeons, and raids). It’s quite disheartening to put all this time into leveling only to realize that there are no guilds wanting to raid at the times you have available.

My major debilitating feature was the lack of add ons. Anyone who has actually seen my interface in WoW can tell I’m an add on junkie. Now don’t mistake me, the game is quite playable as is. It’s perfect for the beginning player, as anything that gives you more information or customization inherently becomes more complex. But, there are ways to do it so much better, and add ons are a great way for this to happen without having to waste developer time that is better spent on creating new content, or running the risk of confusing new or more casual players. My character is a cleric, and I wanted to heal end game content, and I didn’t want to heal it just any way, I wanted to heal it as a warden, which is a heal over time based healer. Healing on a character who relies on HoT spells is absolutely infuriating when you have no way to track what characters have your spells on them already without clicking on the person and searching through a massive buff list to try and locate what might be your spell. Possible? Yes. Makes me feel frustrated, annoyed, and incredibly inefficient? Yes, yes, and hell yes. And it is so much easier with a threat meter to tell as a damage dealer when it is ok to go all out or when you need to hold back, and tanking so much less stressful when you can tell how far ahead of your group you actually are. I could go on and on preaching about how much I love add ons, but this isn’t the article for that.

A heavily modified WoW healer UI, from WowInsider.  Rift has some basic UI customization in game, but add ons allow much more customization for you to tailor to your specific needs, whether you need easier to read health bars or just want something more aesthetically pleasing.

I’ll limit this to the big three of my complaints, since this post is growing to epic proportions already. Last of the three is how rifting tapers off as you get higher level. In the first few zones you quest in, rifts abound everywhere, and if you log on for three hours in an evening, you can count upon a zone invasion happening for you to participate in. I love the zone invasions; the entire zone banding together to force back the enemy, and a certain amount of tactics having to occur to be successful is exciting. However, the zone invasions suffered an abrupt drop off once you reached a certain point; I went from approximately level 30 to level 50 without seeing more than 1 or 2. Once I reached 50, the only time I actually saw any was when I decided to forgo my entire Saturday or Sunday, and then maybe I’d be online for one. For something that I enjoyed so very much, it was, to say the least, a disappointment for them no longer occur much at all.

With that said, I expect I will give it another go in a few months. Of my major complaints, I am quite aware the Trion is either in the process of fixing or has pushed some fixes for all of them (there have been numerous tweaks to try and get zone invasions to occur more frequently, there is some sort of free server transfer service for your character (though I’m not clear on the specifics of how it works), and support for add ons is coming soon). With these complaints addressed, I would expect my interest in the game would solidify much more. All in all, Rift is a sold game that shows all the signs of sticking around for a significant period of time, and I expect that most anyone that has enjoyed WoW will enjoy Rift as well, and I think it has some innovations built in that even Blizzard could learn from and adopt. 

The tentacles from beyond are going to get you!

Rift in Review, Part 2

Couldn't get enough, could you? Welcome back for more of Megan's review of Rift.

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The Rifts also introduce you to another of the games quality of life improvements – Open Raid groups. Whenever you come near a Rift or Invaders, a button pops up on the top of the screen prompting you to join an open group to tackle the invaders. Auto forming groups such as this take away the annoyance of trying to get an invite to a group, particularly when the fight is going strong and people are perhaps too busy to manually invite. The open group format is also quite nice for quests with very specific kill objectives – all you have to do is click on a player’s name, select join party, and you are in a party with no confirmation steps needed. For those of you who want to play with a specific group of people, there is the ability to turn your group private, but I implore you to keep your group open as much as possible – it’s much less of a headache for solo players. The benefits of Open Raid groups are really shown during the Zone Invasion events (periodically the enemy will do a focused invasion attempt where everyone in the zone needs to band together to turn the enemy back) where you can join groups with those nearby in order to be the most effective.
The photo to the left is the party bars in Rift, showing the absolute mess of buffs and debuffs (the icons) on the characters in the party, in some cases obscuring health bars of the character shown below it.  Most of this information is largely irrelevant, and could do with some filtering to show anything that is actually an important piece of information to know.  Digesting this in the middle of the action takes a lot more work than it should have to

The other main thing that sets the game apart for me is their class set up. From a clearly superficial standpoint, 4 classes seem very limited. However, upon closer inspection, there is a great deal of customization within each class to give an incredible amount of variety. Within each class there are 9 ‘souls’ (8 Player vs Event based, and 1 Player vs Player based), which to those WoW players out there are analogous to each branch of a talent tree, and you pick any three of these to combine to make your character. There are obviously so-called ‘cookie cutter’ specializations involved, souls that are ‘meant’ to be paired with other souls, but you can combine them in many unique ways to create a playstyle all your own. Also available for purchase as soon as you can enter the main city are additional specialization templates so you can save up to 5 roles that are available for use anytime (able to be swapped to whenever you are out of combat), though beyond 3 can be very cost prohibitive for a low level player. This ability to mix and match souls is very appealing, and it’s a great deal of fun to see how you can combine the souls to do different things.

Rift in Review, Part 1

Linz and Debbie would like to introduce their first guest blogger: Megan. She and Linz went to high school together. Megan is an avid PC gamer, and was kind enough to give us a thorough rundown on Rift, especially on its points versus WoW. Here is part one of her review. Come back tomorrow for part two.

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It seems every new MMO brags that it will be the fabled “WoW Killer.” A slew of games have gone past with the label, including (but not limited to) Warhammer, Aion, Rift, Lord of the Rings Online. The only one of the many that seems to actually have a bit of steam to it to date, that can perhaps claim to have bitten a not insignificant portion of WoW’s 12 million strong player base off, is Trion’s Rift. No others seemed to take quite the direct aim for Warcraft like Trion did, with its “We’re not in Azeroth anymore!” campaign. My interest in WoW recently slid quite a bit, and I dabbled in Telara for a few months.

The game was quick and easy to pick up. Many WoW fanboys rant and rave about Rift being nothing but a WoW clone, and this complaint is not without a certain degree of merit. The default UI is strikingly similar to WoW, from the action bars to the party and raid frames. But, what people don’t remember (or refuse to acknowledge) is that WoW is now the Gold Standard in the MMO department. It redefined the genre, and it is what so many people expect in the new games. Way back when, before WoW became the monster that it is now, people also complained about WoW being nothing but an Everquest clone, which was the Gold Standard in its heyday. Part of what made WoW what it is today was its accessibility and its ease of pickup, and Trion uses this to its advantage. People familiar with WoW will be able to plunge right in and feel at home, while newcomers to the genre will be able to jump in with a very low learning curve. Being able to actually play the game itself very quickly is part of what will help it become successful, as nothing will turn you off a game quicker than having to slog through for hours just trying to figure out the basics.

An customizable raid and party frames, with indicators to show who has what buffs, debuffs, or heal-over-time spells active and a threat meter, showing exactly how far you have to go until the mob comes to gnaw on you.

 So what then makes Rift stand apart from WoW? The obvious - The Rifts! The namesake of the game is what the storyline revolves around. A quick story rundown: at your character’s creation, you are heralded as your world’s salvation. The world you are brought into has already been taken over by elemental Rifts and Lord Regulos. The remainders of your faction’s forces are now focused on holding the enemy back for just long enough for your character to be sent back in time, tasked with keeping Regulos from turning Telara into this Rift riddled wasteland. You are sent back to a point when the war is just beginning, when the Rifts reaching from the elemental planes are just starting to encroach upon the world. Your first encounters with Rifts are very simple, and a great introduction to the mechanic. As you level up, they become increasingly difficult, requiring greater skill, a larger group, or sometimes both to defeat. I enjoy this mechanic immensely, particularly the fact that they very often are not ignorable. The rifts at their beginning stages take over a swath of area, and any quest objectives are often unable to be completed until the rift is closed. As the rifts persist for longer periods of time, they spawn invaders that roam the country side, often going straight for quest locales, and if they aren’t defeated they may take over the quest locale, and any quests given or completed at that area are unable to be accessed until the invaders are defeated. There are some who detest this mechanic, who dislike having their routine interrupted for their playtime. Quite frankly, those people should go play a different game. The Rifts are one of the major differences of the game from its predecessors, and forcing you to confront them head on nails this difference home, as well as really giving you the sense that Yes, there is a War going on, and Yes, I am making a difference in this War.

Mommy + Gamer = Mommer? Gammy?

I have no idea what to call this mash-up of mommy blogging and gamer blogging, but that's where I'm going.  And no, I don't want to alienate the non-mommys out there.  It's more of a perspective on fitting gaming into your life.  For me, that's fitting gaming into my mommy-ness.

So Debbie's previous blog is what inspired me to finally start the mommy-mash-up series.  Hackers.  Ugh.

(Header to this story: Yes, I play WoW.  No, I have no intention of turning this blog into some kind of WoW hate/love fest.  Enough of those exist.)


The story begins as such: I was innocently trying to log into WoW and I couldn't.  Strange.  It says I need an authenticator and I don't even have one, therefore there shouldn't be one associated with my account.  I realize I've been hacked.  Frustrated, confused, and embarking on what would become an incredibly ANNOYING journey, I called Blizzard customer service.  Let me just tell you, have some time set aside if you have to do this.  The time wait on the phone?  40-45 minutes.  REALLY!?  (Yes, this story deserves all these italics and caps locks. You don't realize how annoyed I was, and you won't unless I annoy you with crazy typing.)

So I got through the wait by trying to use the automated system, which did nothing for me, but got me put into a different queue and I got through to someone in about 10 minutes.  And she was delightful!  We chatted, she told me I was hacked, she reset my account and all was right in the world.  So I logged in, checked my characters, and nothing had been messed with - hurray!  I played for 30-45 minutes when suddenly I lost my connection...or so I thought.  I tried to log back on and it tells me that I have been banned.  Well, something is clearly wrong here, I thought.  And I close the window and try again, but to no avail.  And then an email pops up: I have been banned for exploitative activity.  I don't even know what that is!  So I get back on the Blizzard Customer "Service" line and wait and wait until I get ahold of someone...and they can do nothing for me.  Despite the fact that a customer service rep had already affirmed that I'd been hacked, the account still had to be put under review, something that could take up to 10 days to complete.  Let's just say that I kind of got angry.  And kind of tried to defend myself by getting kind of upset.  It didn't do any good.  Lucky for me it was a very clear cut case and I was back on in about 12 hours.

That was a long story to get down to this point: a hacker got into my account, did some unsavory things (or as the customer service rep said "weird stuff" -  what is that!?) and screwed me over.  And what good did it do for them?  Absolutely nothing.  At best they could've spammed their gold sell website which is so lame and who falls for that?  At worst, I don't know what they did...obviously something "weird".  I'll never know.  And I'll never know what possesses people to do something like that.

So a new category of hackers: hackers who hack just to mess with other players.  It's so unfair.  Why jack with someone's play so directly?  If you're going to hack and ruin the game experience by cheating, that is a different level of suck...but trying to infiltrate me?  So uncool.

And that links to my mommy-ness by this: when I couldn't log into WoW during my kids naps (my good free time to game during the day when I need a break), I was so heartbroken.  That is the main reason I got so upset with the customer service rep. I felt punished for something I clearly didn't do.  And they were taking away my escape.  Isn't that what gaming really is?  An escape from your life, albeit temporary, but oh-so-very fun?   And as a mom I feel like my time for doing it has been cut so drastically that I was extra mad that another element I couldn't control took my game time away.

I felt like a kid who was grounded!  And I didn't even do it, mom!!  (laughs)

So how do you sneak gaming into your every day life?  Generally I have the kids' nap time, if they comply and sleep at the same time.  Generally I do my gaming from 10pm-2am, but sometimes I just don't have it in me to deny myself the sleep.  What's a girl to do?